Emissions of CO2 have come to be regarded as the main factor in climate change in recent years, and how to control them has become a pressing issue. The problem cannot simply be labeled a technological one, however, because it is deeply involved with social and economic issues. Since 2008, the Global Center of Excellence (COE) program titled Energy Science in the Age of Global Warming Toward a CO2 Zero-Emission Energy System has been held at Kyoto University, Japan. The program aims to establish an international education and research platform to foster educators, researchers, and policy makers who can develop technologies and propose policies toward a zero-emission society by the year 2100. Setting out a zero-emission technology roadmap, Global COE promotes socioeconomic studies of energy, the study of new technologies for renewable energies, and research in advanced nuclear energy. A compilation of the lectures and presentations from the first symposium of Global COE held at Kyoto University, this book is intended to provide the impetus for the establishment of low carbon energy science to bring about harmony between mankind and the environment."

Protecting the Ozone Layer: Lessons, Models, and Prospects Since the mid-1980s, the international community has adopted several significant instruments designed to reverse the degradation of the life support systems of the planet. None of these international agreements have been as successful as the 1987 Montreal Protocol in creating the incentives and mechanisms for protecting the ozone layer. Through the efforts of industry, government and public interest groups, national commitments and achievements have progressed further and faster than expected, while the list of controlled chemicals has expanded. Now in its second decade, the Protocol enters a crucial phase of its implementation. Protecting the Ozone Layer: Lessons, Models, and Prospects presents a wealth of information about the scientific, legal-political, and technological hurdles that we will have to overcome if humanity is to reverse its self-destructive course. The technology section in particular should appeal to industries affected by ozone layer protection as well as those affected by climate protection, since this is the first ozone publication featuring insights by the companies that spearheaded the major technological breakthroughs. Every initiative to improve the environmental performance of industry has been accompanied by pronouncements of economic devastation, from acid rain to auto emissions standards, from auto mileage improvements to the protection of the ozone layer. Each new initiative brought claims from industry that this situation was different, yet none of their predictions have come true. At a time when industry fights efforts to protect the environment, the ozone experience shows both how technical breakthroughs have enabled environmental protection policies to work in the past and how they will work again in the future. Protecting the Ozone Layer: Lessons, Models, and Prospects is the product of a Colloquium that was organized in September 1997 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Montreal Protocol. Contributions have been gathered from researchers and practitioners in the field, including some of the very same scientists whose work awakened the international community to the seriousness of the danger that humanity now faces. Other contributors include the scholars and diplomats who wrote and negotiated the text of the Protocol and its amendments, and the key figures who have been influential in convincing industry to support the process.

A variety of ceramic materials has been recently shown to exhibit nonlinear stress strain behavior. These materials include transformation-toughened zirconia which undergoes a stress-induced crystallographic transformation in the vicinity of a propagating crack, microcracking ceramics, and ceramic-fiber reinforced ceramic matrices. Since many of these materials are under consideration for structural applications, understanding fracture in these quasi-brittle materials is essential. Portland cement concrete is a relatively brittle material. As a result mechanical behavior of concrete, conventionally reinforced concrete, prestressed concrete and fiber reinforced concrete is critically influenced by crack propagation. Crack propagation in concrete is characterized by a fracture process zone, microcracking, and aggregate bridging. Such phenomena give concrete toughening mechanisms, and as a result, the macroscopic response of concrete can be characterized as that of a quasi-brittle material. To design super high performance cement composites, it is essential to understand the complex fracture processes in concrete. A wide range of concern in design involves fracture in rock masses and rock structures. For example, prediction of the extension or initiation of fracture is important in: 1) the design of caverns (such as underground nuclear waste isolation) subjected to earthquake shaking or explosions, 2) the production of geothermal and petroleum energy, and 3) predicting and monitoring earthquakes. Depending upon the grain size and mineralogical composition, rock may also exhibit characteristics of quasi-brittle materials."

This book presents the history, phenomena, and relevance of the stratosphere. Beginning with the discovery of the stratosphere itself, the book explores various unexpected phenomena observed in the stratosphere, such as the ozone hole in 1984 and the influence of the 11-year solar cycle in 1987. It describes the interrelations of stratospheric phenomena and its effects on the variability of the climate system, as well as examines various human impacts on the system such as the decrease in the ozone layer.

Collected articles in this series are dedicated to the development and use of software for earth system modelling and aims at bridging the gap between IT solutions and climate science. The particular topic covered in this volume addresses the process of configuring, building, and running earth system models. Earth system models are typically a collection of interacting computer codes (often called components) which together simulate the earth system. Each code component is written to model some physical process which forms part of the earth system (such as the Ocean). This book is concerned with the source code version control of these code components, the configuration of these components into earth system models, the creation of executable(s) from the component source code and related libraries and the running and monitoring of the resultant executables on the available hardware.

This book is the first comprehensive, in-depth review and summary of the U.N. FCCC AIJ pilot. Over 30 prominent players in the U.N. FCCC AIJ pilot, drawn from 12 countries, prepared the 16 peer-reviewed chapters in this book. Most chapters are extensively illustrated and the book contains a glossary of acronyms and a list of points of contact in the U.N. FCCC AIJ pilot. To help meet the technical and policy needs associated with the U.N. FCCC and complementary treaty negotiations, this book has three broad objectives: review, interpret and compile experiences of AIJ pilot participants and observers; based on empirical data and skilled observations, identify and document lessons learned from the AIJ pilot; and, interpret, summarize and translate lessons learned for future consideration by FCCC parties. Specific topics covered in this book include an introduction to the AIJ pilot and the FCCC guidelines/criteria, AIJ project development and finance, the project development community, an overview of energy and land-use and forestry sector projects, sustainable development, technology transfer, human and institutional capacity building, legal issues, and project monitoring, verification and reporting. This volume will be of interest to the generalists familiar with FCCC issues and negotiations but explores most topics in sufficient technical and policy depth to be must reading for policy analysts, diplomats, environmental protection specialists, scientists, engineers, project developers, attorneys, economists, development workers, foresters, and energy specialists.

Especially due to the increasing environmental problems there is a need to collect as many data as possible in the upper atmosphere. This book serves as a general multidisciplinary guide and introduction for a more effective use of the large amount of now available data from the Earth's atmosphere. It also shows the problems of the use of large amounts of time series data - for basic science as well as for environmental monitoring - and the related information systems. The book is aimed for scientists and students interested in the Earth's atmosphere which is vital for the understanding of environmental changes in the global system Earth.

Comets are always very impressive phenomena. Their appearances at regular, but mostly irregular, times excite people who see them. Astronomers have the obvious advantage of being able to see more of comets, and to study them. Their enthusiasm is reflected in the 50 papers in this book, written by more than 90 experts. The reviews in this book clearly describe a landmark in the history of cometary studies. Knowledge gathered up to and including Comet Halley are presented in two volumes. The first volume is about general aspects of observing and studying comets, where they originate and how their evolution develops. The second volume goes into the details of what a comet is: the nucleus, the coma, cometary dust, plasmas and magnetic fields. The book ends with a reflection by Fred Whipple about Comets in the Post-Halley Era. The book discusses all aspects of comets and is therefore suitable for use in graduate level courses. All astronomers and geophysicists interested in comets will find very useful and well-presented information in this book.

In regard to global change, emphasis is generally placed on the increase in global temperature, but large changes in the distribution of precipitation are also likely to occur. Such changes have been redorded in the past by paleoclimatological studies or in the field of climatology. Different approaches to monitoring and forecasting the evolution of climate-scale precipitation are reviewed by paleoclimatologists, hydrologists, satellite meteorologists, and climate modellers.

The chapters in this section place the problems of vegetation and climate interactions in semi-arid regions into the context which recur throughout the book. First, Verstraete and Schwartz review desertification as a process of global change evaluating both the human and climatic factors. The theme of human impact and land management is discussed further by Roberts whose review focuses on semi-arid land-use planning. In the third and final chapter in this section we return to the meteorological theme. Nicholls reviews the effects of El Nino/Southern Oscillation on Australian vegetation stressing, in particular, the interaction between plants and their climatic environment. Vegetatio 91: 3-13, 1991. 3 A. Henderson-Sellers and A. J. Pitman (eds). Vegetation and climate interactions in semi-arid regions. (c) 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Desertification and global change 2 M. M. Verstraete! & S. A. Schwartz ! Institute for Remote Sensing Applications, CEC Joint Research Centre, Ispra Establishment, TP 440, 1-21020 Ispra (Varese), Italy; 2 Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI48109-2143, USA Accepted 24. 8. 1990 Abstract Arid and semiarid regions cover one third of the continental areas on Earth. These regions are very sensitive to a variety of physical, chemical and biological degradation processes collectively called desertification.

For a long period Soil Mechanics has remained at the semi-empirica stage, and only a few decades ago it has shown a tendency to become a fundamental science. However, this evolution is taking place slowly; in spite of the efforts of numerous research scientists, the very complex rheological laws of soils are still not well known. Even if these laws were elucidated, it would take a long time still to deduce simple rules from them for reliable and convenient use in current practical engineer- ing. In the pursuit of these distant aims - and of others more imme- diate - fundamental research and applied research are very active, both in Rheology and Soil Mechanics. The complexity of the problems to be solved should incite the laboratory researchers and the engineers to a continuous collaboration. Everyone acknowledges the advantage of these connections although aware of the difficulty of realizing this wish. However, contacts are being made little by little between the repre- sentatives of the different branches of Rheology and Soil Mechanics, to the great benefit of science. The bureau of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM), aware of the importance of these two associat- ed fields of mechanics, considered it possible to accelerate the natural and necessary processus of their interpenetration by organizing in Grenoble, from 1st to 8th April 1964 an International Symposium on Rheology and Soil Mechanics.

During the past several years I have been engaged in applied research related to the stability analysis of slopes. This research was supported by the Institute for Mining and Minerals Research, University of Kentucky, in response to the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, which requires stability analysis for refuse dams, hollow fills, and spoil banks created by surface mining. The results of the research have been published in several journals and reports and also presented in a number of short courses. Both the sim plified and the computerized methods of stability analysis, as developed from this research, have been widely used by practicing engineers throughout Ken tucky for the application of mining permits. The large number of out-of-state participants in the short courses indicates that the methods developed have widespread applications. This book is a practical treatise on the stability analysis of earth slopes. Special emphasis is placed on the utility and application of stablity formulas, charts, and computer programs developed recently by the author for the analy sis of human-created slopes. These analyses can be used for the design of new slopes and the assessment of remedial measures on existing slopes. To make the book more complete as a treatise on slope stability analysis, other methods of stability analysis, in addition to those developed by the author, are briefly discussed. It is hoped that this book will be a useful reference, class room text, and users' manual for people interested in learning about stability analysis."

This monograph covers phenomena of deformation and machining of granular media: macroscopic particles of different size, shape, and surface properties which typically exhibit behavior similar to fluids, as well as the behavior of solids under deformation. The book analyses the behavior of granular media in soils, rocks and stones, metals and various synthetic materials, presenting a theoretical description, applications and understanding of basic phenomena in granular matter.

Performance-based Earthquake Engineering has emerged before the turn of the century as the most important development in the field of Earthquake Engineering during the last three decades. It has since then started penetrating codes and standards on seismic assessment and retrofitting and making headway towards seismic design standards for new structures as well. The US have been a leader in Performance-based Earthquake Engineering, but also Europe is a major contributor. Two Workshops on Performance-based Earthquake Engineering, held in Bled (Slovenia) in 1997 and 2004 are considered as milestones. The ACES Workshop in Corfu (Greece) of July 2009 builds on them, attracting as contributors world-leaders in Performance-based Earthquake Engineering from North America, Europe and the Pacific rim (Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan, China). It covers the entire scope of Performance-based Earthquake Engineering: Ground motions for performance-based earthquake engineering; Methodologies for Performance-based seismic design and retrofitting; Implementation of Performance-based seismic design and retrofitting; and Advanced seismic testing for performance-based earthquake engineering. Audience: This volume will be of interest to scientists and advanced practitioners in structural earthquake engineering, geotechnical earthquake engineering, engineering seismology, and experimental dynamics.

Climate change has been addressed since last decade based on the influence of human activities like production of industrial effluents, land use changes and other activities due to development of the society. These are very important issues no doubt but the activities due to the influence of extraterrestrial phenomena have not been given its due importance. An attempt is being made here to understand the influence of extraterrestrial activities as one of the important factors of climate change has been attempted here. The influence of Sun and distant stars on the environment of the earth has been studied during the cyclic changes in the Sun as well as episodic changes in the environment due to the effect of other celestial objects in between Sun-Earth environment. The study has been carried out based on the changes within the Sun as well as changes during the solar eclipse. During these extra terrestrial changes it has been observed that the earth changes in its atmosphere as well as geosphere, which may have local effect but the increase of these local effect in large scale may contribute to the climate change. Solar radiation drives atmospheric circulation. Since solar radiation represents almost all the energy available to the Earth, accounting for solar radiation and how it interacts with the atmosphere and the Earth's surface is fundamental to understanding the Earth's energy budget.

The effects of meteorological phenomena upon forest produc tivity and forestry operations have been of concern for many years. With the evolution of system-level studies of forest eco system structure and function in the International Biological Program and elsewhere, more fundamental interactions between forest ecosystems and the atmosphere received scientific atten tion but the emphasis on meteorological and climatological effects on forest processes remained. More recently, as recogni tion has developed of potential and actual problems associated with the atmospheric transport, dispersion, and deposition of airborne pollutants, the effects of forest canopies upon boundary-layer meteorological phenomena has come under scientific scrutiny. Looking to the future, with rising atmospheric con centrations of C02 and increasing competition for the finite fresh-water resources of the earth, interest in the role of forests in global C02 and water balances can also be expected to intensify. Thus, the nature of forest canopy-atmosphere interac tions, that is to say, the meteorological phenomena occurring in and above forest canopies, are of importance to a wide variety of scientific and social-issues. Demands for forest meteorological information currently exceed levels of knowledge and given the economic constraints of science in general and environmental sciences in particular, chances for major improvements in scien tific support in the near future are slim. Unfortunately, studies of environmental phenomena in and above forests are costly and logistically difficult. Trees, the ecological dominants of forest ecosystems, are the largest of all terrestrial organisms."

Combining experts from the medical and materials sciences, the Institute considered current concepts in medical and materials sciences as they relate to implantable prostheses in orthopedic surgical practice. The syllabus included theory and applications of materials properties, physiological function, and host response to metal and non-metal materials. Total hip prostheses are the most common orthopedic device implanted today involved in over 200,000 operations. Failures occur at the rate of 10~-40~ at ~ to 10 years. Failures are due to loosening, infection, fracture of femoral components, or destruction of the pe 1 vi c components .' All these, and other problems related to the implantation of the devices, the surgical procedures, and device pathology, were. discussed in light of current, as well as, emerging technologies and scientific knowledge. Repeatedly, scientists designing prostheses became aware of a lack of understanding of physiological phenomena associated with biocompatibility; the interchange among practising physicians, basic scientists, and pathologists at this Institute was appreciated. We thank all the contributors and participants for their effort. Thanks are also due to the personnel of the Scientific Affairs Division of NATO. The daily routines of running the Institute were greatly facilitated by the efforts of Pedro Cuevas, M.D, Jose Gutierrez Diaz, M.D, and Dr. Hanita Kossowsky. The devoted help of Nir Kossovsky, M.D, in setting the conference and in editing this book, is sincerely appreci ated.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on GeoSpatial Semantics, GeoS 2011, held in Brest, France, in May 2011. The 13 papers presented together with 1 invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. The papers focus on formal and semantic approaches, time and activity-based patterns, ontologies, as well as quality, conflicts and semantic integration. They are organized in topical sections on ontologies and gazetteers, activity-based and temporal issues, models, quality and semantic similarities, and retrieval and discovery methods.

The increasing production of industrial goods, heat, and energy, as well as traffic, has led to the release of considerable amounts of toxic trace metals to the atmosphere. The result is elevated concentrations of toxic metals in local populations and eco systems. Recently the problem of atmospheric long-range transport of trace metals has also been recognized. Significant amounts of these pollutants are disposed and deposited both on regional and global scales. In the atmosphere they may influence the chemical reactions. Of particular interest is their catalytic effect on the oxidation prosesses taking place in water droplets or on the surface of wet particles (e. g. the oxidation of sulphur dioxide to sulphate), however, the main environmental impact starts when the atmospheric trace metals are deposited on ground and vegetation and subsequently brought into the water circulation. During the later years significant progress has been made in the development of equipment to reduce and control the atmospheric emissions of toxic trace metals. This particularly applies to electrostatic precipitators and wet scrubbers for the collection of fine particles. The main objective of the workshop was to survey present knowledge concerning the sources, atmospheric fluxes, sinks and chemical impact of the atmospheric trace metals, and to review the developments of emission control equipment and the perspectives to reduce the potential risks from toxic metals. During the first two days of the meeting, 15 invited review papers were presented."

The publication of this first volume on the Quaternary Period in Saudi Arabia marks a significant milestone in the study of this Kingdom's basic geology. It also represents a major achievement in international cooperation in scholarship. The study of the Quaternary Period of Saudi Arabia was first proposed by Austrian scientists and by the officers of the Austrian Academy of Sciences early in 1972. A meeting was arranged between representatives of that Academy and of the University of Petroleum and Minerals, in Vienna, during May and June of that year, and tentative agreement was reached on the details of this cooperative venture. An exchange of letters, 15th June 1972 from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and 21th June 1972 from the Uni versity of Petroleum and Minerals, formally recorded the basis of the agree ment and arranged for the first visit to Saudi Arabia of the initial research team and accompanying officials from Austria. This team was headed by Professor Dr. JOSEF ZOTL, of the Department for Hydrogeology, Technical University of Graz, the initial project director. Many scientists, administrators, and officials have contributed to the success of this fundamental research project. Their number is too extensive to mention in this Foreword, but the principal contributors have been listed in the body of this text in conjunction with the specific areas of investigation in which they participated. The enormous contribution of Professor Dr. ZOTL, however, merits exceptional commendation.

The present book is the result of work carried out over a period of about ten years by the author and his co-workers in order to describe more accurately the slow irreversible deformation in time of the rocks surrounding underground openings. To begin with, our efforts were directed toward a better under standing of the mechanical behaviour of rocks and to the formulation of more precise mathematical models for their dominant mechanical properties, mainly irreversible dilatancy and/or compressibility during creep. Subsequent efforts were focused on finding improved solutions to important mining and oil engineering problems, such as, for instance, the creep of rocks around wells and tunnels, short-term failure which may occur around an underground opening, damage and failure which take place after long-time intervals, the tunnel support analysis incorporating rock creep, etc. The book is the result of a great number of questions posed either by mining engineers or by the author himself, and of the corresponding answers (unfor tunately often only partial answers). This dialogue must certainly be continued in order to improve the models and to formulate models for other kinds of rocks, or, ultimately to obtain solutions for other important engineering problems. It is hoped that the book will also contribute to a better description, by means of mathematical models, of the mechanical behaviour of rocks."

Since this new science is of an unprecedented interdisciplinary nature, the book does not merely take stock of its numerous ingredients, but also delivers their multifaceted integration.
The resulting master paradigm - the co-evolution of nature and anthroposphere within a geo-cybernetic continuum of processes - is based on a structured manifold of partial paradigms with their specific ranges. Most importantly, this serves the scientific foundation of a meaningful, safe and efficient environment and development management for solving the most burning questions concerning humankind and its natural environment.
The more concrete elucidation of the natural and human dimensions, as well as various attempts and instruments of integration are represented in the different parts of the book, while the didactic quality is heightened by many allegoric illustrations.

Climate varies on all scales of time and space, bya large variety of reasons. However, before any discussion of reasons can be performed it is necessary to realize the very facts of climate variability by means of observations or reconstructions, respectively. In this book we focus on observed long-term trends of selected climate elements (tempera ture, precipitation, humidity, pressure ) as revealed by direct measurements of the Euro pean station network within the recent 100 years. Of course, there are a number of problems in detail: Reliability and accuracy of data, time series homogeneity, statistical confidence oftrends and so on. We hope that these problems are addressed in an instructive and, as far as possible, exhausting way. The main purpose of this work, however, was to provide a collection of trend charts which specify the regional particularities of observed climate trends in different months or seasons of the year leading us to an 'Atlas of observed climate trends in Europe'. Keeping in mind the recent World Meteorological Organization (WMO) climate nor mal (CLINO) period, we have also calculated the 1961-1990 trends."

This book is based on a workshop on biogeography of freshwater algae held during the Fifth International Phycological Congress in China 1994. A group of outstanding specialists covering widely different approaches to the subject have been brought together, and this collection of their contributions forms a unique volume: there is no other book on the subject. It thus fills an evident gap in the phycological literature, and will be of major interest to researchers and teachers within phycology, limnology, and evolutionary biology. However, it may also be useful in courses for advanced students.

In the years since the pioneering efforts of Sir Edward Appleton, M. A. F. Barnett, G. Breit, and M. A. Thve, many radio techniques have been employed to investigate the terrestrial ionosphere. The purposes of this book are to exam ine the basic physical interaction process of radio waves with the ionosphere, scrutinize each of the radio techniques currently in use, and describe the elements of each technique, as well as assess their capabilities and limitations. I have included some of the history of each technique, since we often tend to forget the efforts of the "pioneers". The interaction of radio waves with the terrestrial ionosphere has been described in considerable detail in several "classic" treatments, e.g., Ratcliffe (1959), Al'pert (1963), Budden (1961) and Davies (1965), Rishbeth and e.g., Flock (1979), Davies Garriott (1969), and in other more recent books, (1990), Hargreaves (1979), and Budden (1985). A few of the radio techniques have been described by Hargreaves (1979) and a book by Giraud and Petit (1978) has also included discussion of several of the techniques. The "WITS" handbook No. 2 (1989) also contains description of several radio techniques.